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Loved the video. sh 4 is a good game and deserve a remaster or remake in the future .

To be fair, the Miller brothers also weren't too fond of how the ending was in retrospective 😅 it wasn't quite the emorional and moral send off they hoped it would be, they said.

Great job with these videos.

How can you turn down a free boxed copy of FF9???

Myst, Riven, and Exile all have a special place in my heart, but Riven most especially because it was a game I spent hours of my childhood trying to solve. (And find every opportunity to travel between islands because of the animations and needing to change the disk out for a different one never got old). My immediate and a little of my extended family would gather together at my cousins' house to play every new Myst entry as it released, and while I was too young to experience Riven, much less Myst, I got the distinct pleasure to join them for Exile, Revelation, and End of Ages; as well as play Myst online with my dad and sister during it's second iteration. But despite not getting to join in the festivities for Riven, I remember my dad playing some of it with me when I was very small, and then playing it on my own and getting so involved at times I even dreamed of different parts of the game and what would have happened if I were the Stranger. The Myst series is a one of a kind game franchise, and Riven in particular stands head and shoulders above the rest as a sequel. I think you did an excellent job expressing that, and it was cool to hear your persepective. I'll be interested to see if either of us plays the re-release of Riven and if you in particular end up having any thoughts on it. :)

I love Crystar and Crymachina (Hayashi's most popular games) but I always have mixed feelings regarding playing this game. The story/lore is interesting and it definitely seems to have kino moments, but the gameplay being so weird and unbalanced puts me off a bit. It would probably benefit from a remaster that fixes the issues with repetitiveness and combat, and maybe some light rewrites. (Such as the problematic content, which tbf, was probably put in by the NPC writers)

Tired of the word "masterpiece" being thrown around so much by reviewers. This game is far too convoluted for most people to enjoy. That alone, is enough to argue against this game's "masterpiece" status. A masterpiece for Cyan? Sure. A masterpiece of gaming? No.

Recently finished FF3 and I'll be honest The Pixel Remaster is SO much better than the PSP version Also I still consider Scholar pretty fine cause you can deal tons of damage with attack items

The bad news: you were only a year old when Riven came out, and you have a painful lack of nostalgia. The good news: you are still in your 20s.

Walter went through a lot of effort just to make one room permanently haunted.

"Orlha's pretty good so I guess do her" >pause< Wat >play< "stuff as well" Oh. Hm. I guess no jokes to be made.

The dwarves attacking the fairies isn't out of nowhere. They quite literally threw Razzly to the Pentapus for her to be eaten. The dwarves are very much evil. You don't even actually need to kill the hydra, you just need a phial of its humour. The reason you have to kill the Hydra is because, well, neither the Hydra nor the Dwarves will cooperate for no reason other than the Dwarves being racist. The dwarves ARE evil. The Fairies ARE stupid and emotional, and it's explicitly called out that when they calm down later they will not continue to blame humans for the dwarves' actions, because cooler heads (Rosetta and Razzly specifically) prevail on this front. They still won't apologize for blaming humans for what the dwarves choose to do mind you, but they won't continue to do so. It should be noted that racism is rampant from both sides of the human v nonhuman conflict, especially for mainland humans, and this is even straight up shown to you with the abuse of demi human workers in Termina and the fact that you spend the final dungeon actually fighting the radical environmentalist anti-human faction. The hydra isn't the last one in the world. They explicitly still exist in the Mainland. The Hydra you kill is the last one in the El Nido Archipelago, but NOT the last one in the world, IIRC it's even mentioned that the reason why you can't just get one from the Mainland is that only a huge ship can cross the passage that leads into El Nido until the tide changes. It's also a factor in both worlds that people want to explore the hydra marshes, so yes, someone will kill the Hydra even if you don't (and IIRC you can even go to the Hydra Marshes later to find a guy who tells you that his group was the one that did it). While I will absolutely agree that this part is definitely rushed and could've been done massively better, it doesn't really have any gaping plotholes, just thematic and narrative choices that kinda suck. Not even the fact that Kid gets rescued anyway, because she gets rescued by Norris, who comes from the Mainland even if it's weird that he has Hydra antivenom on him, and you meet Norris in Viper Manor in disguise as a dishwasher. This is even made explicit if you take the specific ending where Kid and Norris storm Viper Manor together. Chrono Trigger made it clear that time will generally try to sort of "self correct" so that even if things are different they will still try to develop in a somewhat similar way, so it's fair to assume that history will generally adapt to any changes you make like taking a different path to complete a goal. Really, the biggest issue is that the Dwarves are straight up evil and thus you don't feel bad for slaughtering them and in fact you feel a little bit bad for letting them go at the end if you get the "best ending" for the Dwarves/Water Dragon Isle subplot. Yes, sure, you kind of need them to protect and nurture the Hydra until it's strong enough to defend itself and support the Hydra Marshes so they don't become a poisonous swamp, but I feel like maybe introducing a friendly dwarf that tried to solve matters with peace (like, say, maybe when you go to Hydra Marshes you can find a dwarf in the marshes that you can explain the situation to, he agrees to help but gets shot down by the dwarf leader who picks a fight and eventually brings out the Hydra to fight you and you're forced to kill it in self defense), and you can only get the "Best" ending by helping that Dwarf become the new leader of the Dwarves. Hell, you can even tie it into the Razzly situation by having you meet the 'good' dwarf as he's trying to save Razzly from the Pentapus because what his fellow dwarves did to her is hella fucked up, and since he owes you his life, he pledges to support you, and the only way to get the best ending is to fight the Hydra with both him and Razzly in your party. You recruit him and with him in the party you don't have to deal with random dwarf fights, only the boss fight against the dwarf leader and his minions and then the hydra. It gives the conflict nuance, it makes it so there is no direct right or wrong, there's good dwarves, there's good humans, there's good fairies, but they all have an uphill climb because of the bad eggs of each race. Maybe having the late game water dragon isle fairies being apologetic and sorry about blaming the humans for what the dwarves did, or making it so dwarves and fairies live together after the events of Water Dragon Isle and have regular trade with Arni and communication with the Marshes, while being thankful because their isolated world has now been opened with communication from outsidsers, would work to give this a little more weight. Plus, some gameplay impact in that if you do it this way, when you come back to fight the Water Dragon, there's no monsters whatsoever and you can just talk to a fairy at the entrance to be immediately taken to the bottom to face the Water Dragon directly, or maybe the fairies open up a shop and you can buy special items or rare elements there (I dunno, maybe level 6 elements to sort of offset not having one of the best party members in the game in this route?). I feel like there's soooo much to do with this, and they do so very little with it.

"The safe thing is to start with light attacks" Young me: "FIERCE FIERCE (Element)"

I don't know how I only just now stumbled upon this video. And I'm so glad I did! I love how you explore the themes, and I'm so happy to finally hear someone speak about the politics in this game! Every other video I've seen has not touched on that, and I'm so glad you did, because it's a prominent feature and worth discussing!

did you play Obduction?

A few more weeks to go and I will be finally going back to Riven

Where was I? At my grandpa's place, checking out my uncle's computer upstairs. I think I spent that entire day just wandering the first island. I never even figured out tower rotation, I just poked things. Didn't get to any other worlds that day. I was just lost, in the experience. Sure, eventually I did do things in it. Always left the rocket until last, it could take me hours to find any of the notes on the sliders. I'd keep overshooting the exact spot on the slider, or I'd loose the note in my mind, or ... hours. But not unhappy ones.

I've got to ask. What about Uru? That odd, mmorpg myst spinoff thing?

I ask everybody here, would chrono 3 (break) have solved what this game lacked?

I love this game. I'm one of the few people I know who actually understand the timeline.

OMG, The Simpsons "say the line!" bit. 😂 I had similar thoughts. Not the best, but not bad. May never play through it again because of that underwater heater/pipe level.

Very well done and stated. This is an immense sadness when you finish Riven. There are no more secrets to uncover, and you can never play and discover Riven again for the first time. The way Cyan were able to make Riven feel like a real place inhabited by real people back in 1997 was truly special. I honestly believe it was the greatest video game ever created. I feel like I have actually visited these islands. It's nuts and very hard to explain, as your video points out. Great watch!

1 year later, Cyan has just dropped the new trailer for the Riven remake -- and as someone who was also profounding affected by playing Riven in my childhood, I'm glad Cyan is not DIRECTLY remaking Riven but instead altering and adding new things where they thought it they could go even deeper with it -- without touching the aesthetics of the game like they did with the 2021 Myst remake. The graphics and art direction look so AUTHENTICALLY and UNQUESTIONABLY Riven -- I dunno, I think it WILL be like playing for the first time all over again. And it comes out *in just a few weeks.*

You clearly love Riven just like any OG player who experienced it first in 97'. This was a great love letter to the game. The Riven remake comes out on June 25th 2024 and while it won't be the same (like you said in your video) it will hopefully take us back there and fill some of the void that was left in us from when we first played.

$4000 a month adjusted for inflation

Brilliant video man - Riven is truly a masterpiece, and largely where my love of puzzle games started. You captured that magic perfectly.

Pisses me off every time because I love Glenn and I feel bad for kidd but every time I have to ignore kidd to get Glenn.

I'm starting the game now. I've seen Steins;Gate's anime (and even made a private fan edit that plays with the dub and subs), but never really played many VNs before, just a few... this is gonna be one hell of a ride, huh

I got ys 9 day one and beat it. I am NOW currently playing and i am near the end of the game and i gotta say, ys 8 is probably the best game in the entire series. I haven't beat them all, but it is very hard for me to believe there is another game in this series that can top ys 8.

My friend who knew I was a huge fan of Ace Attorney and Danganronpa recommended this game to me. I decided to play the demo and immediately bought it afterwards. Bought the sequel on release day. =D

Given its story I honestly don’t see how it isn’t considered a Chrono trigger 2

Cullin

The thing that really stuck out odd for me in Firmament was that outside of the Swan there are no journals! The game gives you so much time to be alone with your thoughts but then also never gives you anything to think about. Compare to how the brothers' rooms in Myst just live rent-free in your head until the rest of the game and it's suddenly shocking how empty the world of Firmament feels because you never learn anything about the people who worked there until the very end. Still loved the game, especially in VR. I'm happy there's at least one video about Firmament on CZcams, I normally do a post-spoiler immunity dive for games I like and I guess this is all there is this time, oops :D

Chrono trigger is fantastic. Cross is a tear jerker

i played 9 when it came out in the west, it was great and i loved it. i think it does a lot of things as good as 8 like some of its character dynamics and gameplay; and things better like combat and traverse. 8 did exploration better in an open zone sense since 9 felt a lot more compact into one continuous map. i think 9 is a good step in the right direction for Adol’s story, but 10 takes place inbetween 1&2 and 3, so hopefully we’d be able to see where they can take him from here

This was a great review. I really love the atelier series and i'm thinking about getting nelke and the legendary alchemists later on for the nintendo switch. Even though it's really not my type of game, i'll still give it a try. I'm also going to buy the other atelier games for the nintendo switch too.

I will say that I really enjoyed Firmament for what it was but it's probably the weakest Cyan game for me. The puzzles were interesting with the Adjunct but I felt they were largely too easy, more trial and error logic puzzles than the environmental puzzles we've seen in the likes of Myst, Riven and Obduction. Also I found the game to be a little easy overall. I had a few moments where I had to use my brain to get past a certain part but overall I never truly got badly stuck to the point where I needed assistance. Also there was a distinct lack of interesting lore and diaries to read, a hallmark of all the other Cyan games where every note, every book, every scrap of paper would reveal something new and interesting about the world. That was not really a big part of Firmament unfortunately and it was worse for it. Still a very fine adventure game overall but a flawed experience.

I am glad I bought and completed it before I heard your opinion. BTW: Did you even complete it? Ascend up to the space station and launch the Starship? (The reason for ALL of the factories below)

And now, just a year later, they're working on an updated version for you to get stuck in. :-)

According to the devs on twitter, hard mode will be added in a future update! That addresses probably my biggest issue with the game, so this is great! Edit: As of today, Murder of Crows (hard mode) has been added to the game!

1:13:50 I bet you vote liberal and have loads of white guilt. What is actually wrong with you? Did you feel the same anxiety when playing as a lightbulb-shaped alien in QBert? The correct feeling to switching to Lynx is that it's cool to play as a different character for a while, but I do agree that it does drag on for a little while, and the story grinds to a halt until you turn back into Serge. I didn't care about playing someone who looked like me, I wanted my friends back. I wanted to go into the places I could before. You have some problems man.

I was like. . . Is this that Cold Steel/Trails youtuber i subscribed to like 2 years ago? 😂

i will pause the review for when i finish the game myself. The fact that you're covering it at all it's all i needed!

wow.. new cullen vid..

Really appreciate you bringing this game to my attention I definitely would have missed it otherwise, and always happy to see someone else understand how unironically scary that Amy level is in SA1 lmao.

5:00 i think hes not talking it seriously *because* he knows its fake .

I am tapping out because I don’t want to be spoiled on any of it, but I am commenting for engagement 🫡

Lockdown survival horror obsession? *SIGNALIS FLASHBACKS*

Great review! Looking forward trying this one out.

As a wittle scardy baby I do not do good with horror but I'm still interested in it. So yeah its nice to be able to watch other people play them. I still cringe when I remember how I punched a hole into a wall when I tried Haunting grounds. It wasn't even a scary part that lead to the hole punching.